DIVERSE ISSUES IN HIGHER EDUCATION -- During the 2016 – 17 academic year, she will introduce a course to students that embodies not only her identity, but shares the untold stories of people like her.
She will teach the course The Black LGBT Experience at Cal State Fullerton.
Each week has a theme “that’s probably something that’s familiar to students in terms of Black history, but they just don’t know the LGBT contribution to that part of our history,” Brooks says, noting that Black gay people are represented in periods from slavery, the civil rights movement, and the Harlem Renaissance to present-day hip-hop and the Black Lives Matter movement.
For Brooks, exploration of racial identity came in the 11th grade during a college prep class, which was mostly filled with Black and Latino students. A black woman from San Francisco State University was her instructor.
In 1996, Brooks received a Bachelor of Arts degree.